On April 1st, 2008 DHS announced the signing of the waiver. A Petition for a Writ of Certiorari was filed with the supreme court by Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club. Amicus briefs in support of the petition have been filed by a number of groups, including the Tohono O'odham Nation.

Stop the Building of the Border Wall: Resist the Department of Homeland Security!

On April 1st, 2008 Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff publicly announced that the Department of Homeland Security would waive a number of environmental and cultural protection laws in order to expedite the building of the border wall along the US / Mexico border.

In his deceleration, Chertoff wrote that he was waiving these laws "in their entirety" and was doing so in order to expedite the building of the wall. But what's worse is that Chertoff's deceleration does not seem limited to the immediate time period when the wall is being built.

The waiver deceleration clearly states that in addition to applying to the period of time when the wall is being built, the waiver also applies to the "upkeep of fences, roads, supporting elements, drainage, erosion controls, safety features, surveillance, communication, and detection equipment of all types, radar and radio towers, and lighting." What this seems to mean is that the waivers of environmental and cultural protection laws will remain in effect for the entire period of time that the finished wall remains in existence.

The following are some of the many laws that the DHS has waived in order to build the wall:.

Many of the laws that the Department of Homeland Security has waived were enacted as a result of public movements in support of environmental protection and the restoration of human rights and dignity to indigenous Turtle Islanders (North Americans).

The fact that these hard won laws can be so easily and blatently thrown out to suit the whim of the administration just goes to show that, in the end, the government does whatever it wants in order to preserve its power, regardless of the laws in place.

These waivers are a blatant act of totalitarinaism and they must be resisted.

We must all do what we can to challenge the Department of Homeland Security and do our best to prevent this wall from being built!

To learn more about this issue please take a look at the following PDF documents: